


I'm on Fire

by botanicapoetica



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Child Abuse, Domestic Violence, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-21
Updated: 2017-11-21
Packaged: 2019-02-05 00:06:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12782577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/botanicapoetica/pseuds/botanicapoetica
Summary: This is a decidedly not happy short fic, but I thought it was important. This subject matter can be heavy for some. Take care.





	I'm on Fire

**Author's Note:**

> This is a decidedly not happy short fic, but I thought it was important. This subject matter can be heavy for some. Take care.

No one had taken Hargrove’s parking spot at school yet. It had been weeks, so Steve parked there that morning with bile in his throat, sick at the idea of some little shithead taking the spot and not knowing what it meant. Who had sauntered out of their car every morning for countless mornings, until one day they didn’t. Steve put the car in park and put the tape in, the events of the past few weeks sliding over him like thick oil. 

He could still remember the tone of Max’s voice on the phone, her terrified whispers for help, that Neil was going too far tonight and she didn’t know what to do. Steve had told her he’d be right there and got in his car, but not before calling Hopper. 

“Hopper, it’s. It’s Billy. I think something is going to happen, you have to get there before I do. Max says he won’t stop.” 

He remembers hanging up and being surprised at how calm he’d sounded, knowing it was wishful thinking when his hands were shaking so bad he could barely start the car. When he couldn’t keep the gas pedal from slamming into the floor of the car, and when he nearly forgot to put on the breaks at the sight of Hopper getting out of his car. He remembers pulling Max down out of her window and telling her to wait in Hopper’s car, telling her to close her eyes until they came back. 

He can still hear the sound of Billy’s front door being shouldered open, with him following closely behind Hopper who had his gun ready. Remembers the cold dread filling him, hearing hard thumps and the sound of Billy gurgling from his room. He can still see what came after Hopper kicked Billy’s door down, shouting for Billy’s dad to step back and put his hands up. 

Neil had been standing over Billy, Billy’s radio dripping in his hand. And Billy was, he was...

What he doesn’t remember is what happened around him past that point. He doesn’t know how Hopper got Neil Hargrove cuffed and on the hallway floor, can’t remember Hopper’s back up coming or the sound of the ambulance. He can only remember, for weeks now, at all hours of the day, this moment. 

He remembers sitting in front of Billy with Billy’s head in his lap, trying to wipe the blood off of his face with his sleeves, even if some small part of him was telling him it didn’t matter now. Billy’s face was all wrong, but Steve thought it had to be fake. Billy’s jaw was at a jagged angle and his eye socket looked like a pile of glass, and he was making horrible sounds. Steve remembers catching some kids torturing a cat by burning it in middle school, remembers the sounds it made. Steve thinks it had sounded a lot like that. 

Steve would’ve liked, more than anything, to say something meaningful happened. That Billy’s eyes locked on to his, that he’d said “Yeah, Harrington, I know.” in that jackass way of his when Steve started chanting “I love you” down to the face resting on his legs. But Steve remembers none of that happened. He remembers Billy coughing hard globs of blood up, the angle making it simply slide down the side of his face, and then nothing. The eyes Steve had looked at day in and day out were dull and Billy was like a big, heavy doll in his arms. 

The next thing Steve remembered was being at home a few days later and so many people being there, Nancy and Jonathan on either side of him, Joyce Byers puttering in his kitchen and the kids very quietly playing a game on the living room floor. 

There wasn’t a funeral. Susan couldn’t afford it, not with everything happening to her and Max now. Steve remembers realizing he couldn’t offer to pay for it, remembers knowing how it would look to everyone, and the rage that filled him at that. That was the fucking problem in the first place. Neil Hargrove had killed his son because he was gay, everyone had ignored the signs that Billy was being abused because it made them uncomfortable. Steve hadn’t called Hopper before that night, never advocated for Billy who was too scared of alternatives or people finding out. Steve couldn’t even pay for Billy’s fucking funeral because even after everything he was fucking scared. Steve remembers standing with everyone in front of an empty mound of dirt in his backyard, remembers screaming all of this at everyone and summarily withdrawing himself from everyone afterwards. 

Steve turns up the volume on his stereo. He’d listened to this tape, THIS song, constantly in the weeks that followed. It was the only physical gift Billy had ever given him, and it was all for him. “I’m on Fire” blasted through his speakers and suddenly he wasn’t there anymore. Steve was in some unnamed future that would never exist, he was in Billy’s car. He was looking over at Billy behind the steering wheel, watching him stick his face out the window. A face that had no bruises, no crushed bones, no fear on it. They were leaving Hawkins, going somewhere they could love each other, where Steve could be paid attention to and Billy could finally be safe. 

Steve could stay there forever.

"At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet

And a freight train running through the

Middle of my head

Only you can cool my desire

I'm on fire"


End file.
